Guest RetroRob215 Report post Posted May 9, 2002 Jim Ross was on 104.1 in Orlando today. -He hinted that NBC may have facilitated the XFL's failure and added that news on that may come out soon. Credit: 411wrestling ------------------------------------------------------------ To quote the man with the plan, Vince McMahon, "UNBELIEVABLE!" I can only imagine what JR means by "more news may come out soon". Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Choken One Report post Posted May 9, 2002 I'd say each company is at equal blame. WWFe is to blame for even trying to challenge NFL. NBC is to blame for rushing the product. If they waited until 2002...With more hype and more respect and better announcers and better organzation...then it would not have failed. It is still my belief that NBC should have brought ARENA football before trying to create a leauge. New leauge's rarely never succeed...only ABA and USFL lasted longer then 4 years. NBC and WWFe are equal to blame. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest kkktookmybabyaway Report post Posted May 9, 2002 So it was in NBC's best interest to be the laughingstock of TV Land for the 3 months the XFL was on? Uh-huh. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest RetroRob215 Report post Posted May 9, 2002 The thing is that the WWF never claimed that NBC wanted to sabotage the XFL until now. I have a feeling they are saying this now because of the XFL bit on the NBC "75th Anniversary Special". Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest dreamer420 Report post Posted May 10, 2002 Probably. Vince is still probably extremely bitter over the league failing because obviously he wanted it to be bigger than the nfl. the games were all broadcast at a really shitty time and the players weren't good enough to be in their own league. if the games were being broadcast sundays, after the nfl season is all ready over they would have brought in the viewers they could have needed to survive another season or two. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest jimmy no nose Report post Posted May 10, 2002 I thought they were still blaming the media or something. At least they've stopped that. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest phoenixrising Report post Posted May 10, 2002 Maybe if the XFL would have gotten some better players, played some better games, not attempted to include angles involving the cheerleaders and not attempted to spit on the NFL at every opportunity, it just might have survived a second year. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest alfdogg Report post Posted May 10, 2002 I thought he was going to say it was Jericho's fault... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest franchise632 Report post Posted May 10, 2002 It was great for NBC to show the XFL as part of there not so good decisions, yet they fail to recognize what a huge part Saturday Nights Main Event was for NBC in the late 80's. With one show drawing a HUGE 15.0 rating for the infamous Andre/Hogan rematch with the twin Hebners angle. Its typical mass media though so no real suprise. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest converge241 Report post Posted May 10, 2002 It is still my belief that NBC should have brought ARENA football before trying to create a leauge. New leauge's rarely never succeed...only ABA and USFL lasted longer then 4 years i agree with that.. i think that would have played better due to the scoring nature as well. NBC would never have done this.. they wanted football bad..they almost started up a league with Turner.. and i agree with thte sentiment that they never should have been so aggressive against the NFL..thats such a david and goliath situation.. akin to like the XWF trying to say that WWE is awful and they are better Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest El Hijo Del Lunatic Report post Posted May 10, 2002 Maybe if the XFL would have gotten some better players, played some better games, not attempted to include angles involving the cheerleaders and not attempted to spit on the NFL at every opportunity, it just might have survived a second year. Shockingly enough, the problem with the XFL wasn't the lack of talent. It was the lack of originality. Yeah, I know that the quality of players wasn't great in the XFL. But the league had to know that the only NFL-quality players around were (shock) IN THE NFL. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. It also doesn't take a genius to realize that the league needed to go one of two routes to be successful - either the USFL route (as in, basically be a competing carbon-copy with the same calibre of players) or the Arena League route (start with football and change the rules around to artificially create some excitement). They couldn't do the former and didn't do enough of the latter, IMO. One of the "big rule changes" that the XFL made, for example, was the "live punt" rule, that made it possible for the kicking team to recover a punt that wasn't touched by anyone. (In the NFL, the ball must touch a player on the receiving team for it to be recoverable.) But that almost never happened during the course of play. Punt returns for touchdowns rarely occur, and while the point of punts was to set up big hits in the league, punters were rarely good enough to put the ball in a spot where the returner could get tattooed. So why even have punts at all? No one cares about a punt. Make teams go for it on fourth down. The fans like it because it eliminates the "boring" field-position garbage the XFL was trying to avoid, and it creates artificial offense by getting teams better field position. I bet I can think of five other rule changes off the top of my head that would've made things more interesting. Let's see: make safeties worth 10 points and the ball, make a FG over 40 yards be worth 4 points and a FG over 50 be worth 5, only require one end of the offensive line to be covered (think of the possibilities of that one - four-back sets, WR screens with all five receivers on the same side, and probably more), allowing teams to block kickoffs (say by making the line of scrimmage be the 50, but letting teams tee up around the 30 or so), and ... ok, if we add the punt thing, that's five. And yeah, these rules might not be the greatest ever, and I may not have thought the whole thing through, but nobody at XFL headquarters had the cojones to even think that far outside the box. LUNATIC If you're going to piss into the wind, you might as well aim for the NFL rulebook. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest RetroRob215 Report post Posted May 10, 2002 It was great for NBC to show the XFL as part of there not so good decisions, yet they fail to recognize what a huge part Saturday Nights Main Event was for NBC in the late 80's. With one show drawing a HUGE 15.0 rating for the infamous Andre/Hogan rematch with the twin Hebners angle. Its typical mass media though so no real suprise. That's a good point, but god-forbid NBC admit that the WWF may have helped them get to where they are today Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly Report post Posted May 11, 2002 I think the league should have started off with a cable deal like arena football and NFL Europe. Why put it on national television during primetime? Vince McMahon promised and delivered a league that would be different from the NFL. The only problem was that his league sucked. Curiosity made people tune in the first weekend, but you can't expect people to get excited over subpar players. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
